Sales funnels help businesses to build relationships with their customers, as well as improve their marketing efforts. Consisting of four different stages, your sales funnel relates to the buyer’s journey.
Each different stage in your sales funnel is important to your success. Having a good understanding of the stages of your funnel will therefore help you to maximize its results.
So, what are the different stages in a sales funnel you need to be aware of? Here’s a brief guide with everything you need to know…
1. Awareness
The first stage in your sales funnel is awareness. This is where your audience becomes aware of your brand. It could be they have seen a paid advertisement, or they may have found your business page on social media.
Your goal in this stage is to start collecting leads as you raise awareness of your brand. The best ways to achieve this goal include:
· Creating useful, valuable content
· Producing videos and infographics
· Focusing on your SEO
· Sponsored social media posts
· In-person events
The content you produce for this stage should be fun and interesting to read. It should aim to solve your audience’s problems and be creative enough to stand out.
2. Interest and Evaluation
The second stage in your sales funnel is interest and evaluation. You have successfully generated interest from a lead, and they now want to learn more about you and how you could potentially help them.
However, this doesn’t mean you should start promoting yourself just yet. The lead still isn’t ready to make a purchase. Instead, you need to nurture them and aim to find out what their end goal is.
Some of the best ways to market to leads at this stage of the funnel include:
· Effective email campaigns
· Posting on social media
· Create in-depth blogs
· Lead magnets
· Adding a chatbot to your website
Tracking what content your leads engage with during this stage is crucial to your success. This will give you a much better idea of the problems they are facing, and how you could help to solve them.
3. Desire
The third stage of the funnel is desire. By this point, your lead is almost ready to buy. They think they want what you have to offer, but they aren’t 100% sure.
Your goal when marketing to prospects in the desire stage, is to ease any worries or concerns they may have. You need to convince them that your products or services are a good investment.
Some effective ways to market during this stage include:
· Show off your testimonials
· Provide case studies from previous customers
· Offer discount codes
· Give them a free trial or consultation
· Do product comparisons
· Make sure you have a pricing page set up
Let the prospect know what benefits they can expect from your products and services. Show them how your product makes life easier for them. If you can ease their concerns, you’ll be able to effectively convert them into a customer.
4. Action
The final stage in your sales funnel is action. The lead is now ready to make a purchase, and your hard work has paid off. However, think the hard work stops once your prospect has decided to make a purchase? Think again!
Now is the time to provide more information about your products or service. How can the customer use them and how do they work?
You’ll want to focus on creating educational content here. Some of the ways to boost results from the action stage include:
· Providing insider tips
· Offering training webinars
· Follow-up email campaigns
· Special offers
It is important to provide as much useful information as you can for the first week or two after a sale. This helps you nurture your relationship with the customer, increasing the chance they will make an additional purchase.
You should never just make a purchase and forget about it. Give the customer a reason to stick with you and remain loyal to your brand. Retaining customers is important if you want to achieve success. They are often far more valuable to your brand than new ones.
Now that you know the four different stages of your sales funnel, you’ll be able to better market your products and services. By focusing on improving each stage of the funnel, you can see significant results.